Anishinaabe traditional beliefs

The Midewiwin (also spelled Midewin and Medewiwin) is the Grand Medicine Society of the indigenous groups of the Maritimes, New England and Great Lakes regions in North America.

According to the oral history of the Anishinaabeg, they originally lived on the shores of the "Great Salt Water" (presumably the Atlantic Ocean near the Gulf of St. Lawrence).

They were instructed by seven prophets to follow a sacred miigis shell (whiteshell) toward the west, until they reached a place where food grew upon the water.

Eventually, after a trick by two of the clans, the other clans travelled west (see William Warren's account of this incident) and arrived at the wild ricing lands of Minnesota and Wisconsin (wild rice being the food that grew upon the water) and made Mooningwanekaaning minis (Madeline Island: 'Island of the yellow-shafted flicker') their new capital.

[7][8] Oral storytelling is often considered unimportant in settler colonial society; however, this form of communication, connection, and teaching has been used for centuries, and is still used to pass down Anishinaabe traditional beliefs through generations.

[11] Nanabush stories carry the message to young Indigenous peoples that it is okay to make mistakes, and that things are not always black and white.

Nanabozho (also known by a variety of other names and spellings, including Wenabozho, Menabozho, and Nanabush) is a trickster figure and culture hero who features as the protagonist of a cycle of stories that serve as the Anishinaabe origin belief.

The myth cycle explains the origin of several traditions, including mourning customs, beliefs about the afterlife, and the creation of the sacred plant asemaa (tobacco).

According to Potawatomi scholar Kyle Powys Whyte, "...indigenous conservationists and restorationists tend to focus on sustaining particular plants and animals whose lives are entangled locally—and often over many generations—in ecological, cultural and economic relationships with human societies and other nonhuman species.

)[9] These teachings include wisdom, respect, love, honesty, humility, bravery, and truth, and are supposed to be practiced towards humans, the earth, and everything in the environment.

[9] According to Leanne B. Simpson in A Short History of the Blockade, the Seven Grandfather Teachings were "...gifted to the Nishnaabeg by Seven Ancestors, a group of loving Elders and advisors that taught a young child these practices as recorded in one of our Sacred Stories."